UN boss tells Syria repression a dead end

UN chief Ban Ki-moon has urged Syria's Bashar al-Assad to stop killing his own people, saying the path of repression is a "dead end", as Damascus announced a general amnesty for crimes committed during the unrest.

"Today, I say again to President Assad of Syria: stop the violence. Stop killing your people. The path of repression is a dead end," Ban said in a keynote address at a conference in Beirut on democracy in the Arab world on Sunday.

"The winds of change will not cease to blow. The flame ignited in Tunisia will not be dimmed," he added.

Ban's comments came as Assad announced a general amnesty for crimes committed during the popular unrest that on Sunday entered its eleventh month.

"President Assad issued a decree stipulating a general amnesty for crimes committed during the events between March 15, 2011 and January 15, 2012," the official SANA news agency reported.

It said the amnesty covered infringements of the law on peaceful demonstrations, the possession of unlawful weapons and army desertion.

The opposition Muslim Brotherhood dismissed the amnesty - the third of its kind since the uprising began - describing it as "neither serious nor credible".

"The regime is trying to make its unrealistic plans for reconciliation and national dialogue credible, and it is in this context that it is making such announcements, for propaganda purposes," the group said.

Releasing prisoners is one of the key conditions of an Arab League roadmap approved by Syria in November to end the country's crisis, which the UN estimates has claimed more than 5000 lives.

Since November, the regime has made a series of announcements of plans to release in all around 4000 prisoners "without blood on their hands".

Syria's bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters has brought increased pressure from its former allies.

The emir of Qatar said in an interview with US network CBS that he favoured dispatching Arab troops to Syria to "stop the killing", a proposal described by former Arab League chief and Egyptian presidential hopeful Amr Mussa as "very important."

Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani's interview with 60 Minutes is the first public call by an Arab leader for an Arab military presence in Syria.

The emir's comments, whose wealthy nation once enjoyed cordial ties with Damascus, come with the Arab League set to review the work of its much-criticised Syria monitoring mission later this month.

"All ideas will be open for discussion," League chief Nabil al-Arabi told reporters in Manama when asked if Saturday's meeting will debate Sheikh Hamad's proposal.

But Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki said in an interview that military intervention in Syria would spark an "explosion" across the entire Middle East.

Ten months after the protests first erupted on March 15, demonstrations continued, with 10,000 people marching on Sunday in the town of Zabadani, in Damascus province, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which reported other protests in the restive northwestern province of Idlib.

The state SANA news agency said that a roadside blast in Idlib killed six workers and injured 16, blaming the attack on an "armed terrorist group."

The Britain-based Observatory said 11 civilians were killed by security forces on Sunday - seven men and a woman in Homs, and three men in Qorqos village in the southern province of Quneitra.